Mr. Obama’s case for war

From today’s editorials: The President’s task Tuesday will be to justify a war that will now be his far more than George W. Bush’s.

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The United States went to war in Afghanistan eight years ago as an indignant nation, justifiably determined to exact revenge for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but as a realistic one as well. The bombing had just begun when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned, “There is no silver bullet.”

Americans should keep those words in mind when President Barack Obama goes on TV Tuesday night to make the case for further escalation of a war that Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss, then-President George W. Bush, left unfinished in their zeal to take on another target, Iraq, with considerably less clarity of purpose.

Mr. Obama says he wants to finish the job and may dispatch as many as 30,000 more troops to do so. He needs to tell the country, in detail that hasn’t been so forthcoming, what that job is. He needs to explain how and when that job might end, at what cost and how we’ll pay for it. The country, meanwhile, needs to listen and ask the probing questions that should have been raised long ago. The public needs to make its expectations clear, and not hide its skepticism.

The Afghanistan war began as a quest to rout the Taliban from power and hunt down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of Sept. 11. The Taliban was overthrown quickly, only to re-emerge as an ever more central presence in a nation where the defining features of what passes for government are instability and questions about its legitimacy. Bin Laden remains ever elusive, a maddening sign of the limits of the war on terrorism.

Mr. Obama confronts formidable enemies, including his own hubris. He, too, might consider Mr. Rumsfeld’s words but also the optimism that he projected last week. “I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive,” he said.

Yet they’re being asked to look forward to what was supposed to have been achieved by now — the marginalization of the Taliban, the elimination of al-Qaida’s threat to America and the development of Afghanistan’s army into a capable fighting force. Determined leadership is one thing. Hubris is another. This was President Bush in the first hours of an eight-year-old war: “We will not falter and we will not fail. … We will not waver, we will not tire.”

The issue here isn’t the war’s legitimacy or even its nobility. It is instead, to use a word favored by Mr. Obama, its necessity. The President says he’s breaking with the policies of the Bush administration. He’s quite pointedly questioning its strategy in fighting that war, and asking for still more resources devoted to it.

It will be up to the country, after hearing from Mr. Obama on Tuesday, to determine if his break from his predecessor is sufficient.

Jay Jochnowitz

3 Responses

Historians… and our Grandchildren… will remember Obama’s 30,000-strong escalation to be the defining moment in the disastrous slaughter that will make Vietnam pale by comparison. If history has taught us anything, it is that Afghanistan is where Tribal loyalty trumps any illusory National unity; where corruption and bribery is a national pasttime; where Foreign Occupiers die in great numbers, many suffering a savagery that will haunt us. Worst of all, Obama is on the verge of launching the greatest recruiting drive… for Al Queda and the Taliban. And for our arrogance and ignorance, they WILL bring the fight to our shores.

In hindsight, two great Americans will be remembered for their political and patriotic courage, two men “over there” who tried to stop the madness– #1- US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry opposes Obama’s increase. Ambassador Eikenberry, a retired Lt. General who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2006-2007, cites rampant corruption as the main reason for his decision. #2- Matthew Hoh, a political officer in the foreign service in Zabul, Afghanistan, resigned his position in a last-ditch warning. The former Marine says “It will take decades and billions of dollars to achieve Success in Afghanistan. Our strategies in Afghanistan are not pursing goals that are worthy of sacrificing our young men and women or spending the billions we’re doing there.”

God help us for what we are about to do, the young Patriots we are sending to die because we did not heed the warnings of history.

The fate of America lies in the direction of money, namely, war or job. The existing economic crisis facing world might be a prelude to another great depression fueled by a wrong and irrevocable choice, from the previous object lessons.